


Sburb Character Creation Guide

by Xalrath



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Guide
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-06-15
Updated: 2011-12-13
Packaged: 2017-10-20 10:48:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 11,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/211975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xalrath/pseuds/Xalrath
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tired of dying before you get all your characters into the Medium? This guide will walk you through how to make characters who stand a decent chance of making it to the Battlefield and beyond. Rundown on all the major Classes, Aspects, Challenges, Weird Time Shit, and more!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Introduction

Sburb. Great game. Magnificent game. Odds are good if you’re reading this guide, you’ve been convinced by one of your friends that it’s just flat-out fantastic, started up your first quickplay game... and lost your first several games to Death By Meteor. If you’re a real masochist, you might even have gotten to your first Denizen before getting slaughtered, giving up, and running to the Internet for help.

There’s no lying about it: Sburb’s learning curve is more or less vertical, and it’s part of why the game got such a murderous panning on release. The user interface is a nightmarish mess of confusing terminology, inventory mismanagement can lose you the game before your first character ever leaves their room, and the only way to get an in-game tutorial more understandable than Nostradamus is to prototype a future self, one of the least intuitive aspects of the game. These factors combined to make the number of reviewers who actually managed to get one of their characters into the Medium in the low tens, and the number who completed the Mobius Reacharound two or three, depending on if you believe the GameBro reviewer wasn’t actually just playing an old copy of Chrono Trigger he found lying around the office. A few of us, though, stuck through it, and found an incredibly deep and adaptive narrative that helped us to look past the fact that if the game kept track of the number of PCs it’s killed the counter would have probably hit six billion by now.

The biggest problem, to my mind, is that manual character generation is deliberately obtuse, and while I haven’t seen a Quickplay party yet that was mathematically incapable of beating the game, it comes up with some -damn- terrible ones sometimes. (Rogue of Time. Heir of Mind. Bard of Space. Warlock/Witch of Frost. Yeah, good luck with that one, kids- sure, just this side of nothing’s going to kill your Heir, but a Rogue can’t WTS worth a damn, the Witch has a pretty lackluster set of debuffs to play with, and your Bard has nobody to SSC but himself.)

Now, I’m not going to give you the most broken combination possible- every other guide out there does that, and they give you a party that will wipe the floor with the final boss but is going to have some real fucking trouble with its first denizen. What I -will- tell you is what character combinations make for entertaining parties, and let you make the rest of the decisions for yourself.

 **2\. Basic Terminology**

Manual character creation gets a little technical. Here’s the key bits.  
 **Class** : First word in your character’s title. Class denotes the progression, max level, Challenge, God-Tier Challenge, and most of the mechanics your class operates under. For example, the Heir class has Slow* progression, High max level (the highest in the game, actually), the Challenge “Become Worthy,” and the GTC “Accept the Mantle.”

 **Aspect** : Last word in your character’s title. Aspect denotes which of the game’s fundamental forces the character interacts with via the mechanic of their class; admittedly, these get a little obscure. Breath denotes life as well as wind, Light denotes luck and fate as well as the classic spears of energy, Blood denotes emotional unity as well as an emphasis on combat, you get the idea.

 **Strife Specibus** : What you use to fight with. As an amateur character you might have allocated something like Pillowkind and assumed you’d completely screwed yourself up forever. Not so. By and large, your Strife Specibus is a cosmetic choice; it doesn’t matter which Kind you take, the game will provide you with an escalating series of weapons no matter how esoteric you pick them. All weapons fall under one of the major five Kinds: Heavykind, Fastkind, Rangedkind, Magickind, and Puppetkind, with a few interesting exceptions.

 **Kernelsprite** : That thing that pops out of the Alchemeiter and starts hovering around. Half of the specialist guides out there are prototyping guides, so I’ll just keep it real simple for you: ONLY PUT ONE THING IN THERE BEFORE ENTERING THE MEDIUM, UNLESS YOU’RE LOOKING FOR AN EXTRA CHALLENGE. Also, for the love of god, DO NOT PUT ANYTHING EVEN REMOTELY LIKE A CLOWN IN THERE. Your midgame gets a lot easier, but your endgame gets absolutely fucking ridiculous.  
Update: Thanks to EctoBiologist for pointing out that if your party includes a Heir of Breath, Heir of Time, Knight of Void, or Witch/Warlock of Light, the game makes a special point of populating their home with multiple harlequin images to maximize the chance you trigger this outcome. Protip: don’t use any of ‘em. Unless you have all three of those it’s possible to have at once, in which case fuck it, you need -some- challenge past the early game.

 **Mobius Reacharound** : The game's term for successfully getting all characters into the Medium. Generally seen as the dividing line between the early game and the mid-game.

 **Denizen** : Mid-game bosses. Big. Nasty. They’ll share the Aspect of the character they belong to.

 **Battlefield** : The location of the late-game and final battle.

 **Alignment** : Always gets truncated P or D, this interacts with Aspect to determine what flavor of buffs/debuffs are available to Seers, Warlocks/Witches, Bards, and Rogues. Generally speaking P results in buffs, D results in debuffs, though it’s reversed for Thieves.

 **Challenge** : The scenario the game will keep throwing at a character until you get it right, unlocking high-level techniques. Stays the same across Class.

 **God Tier** : Ever played Fire Emblem? Basically, it's possible to achieve a level beyond max level if you perform a one-time-per-character Challenge. I won’t spoil the way they usually work, but trust me when I say you’re not very likely to get it for any classes that aren’t Heir or aspects that aren’t Light. Don't worry, it's more a bonus than it is anything else.

 **GTC** : God Tier Challenge. The one-time (barring very, very few exceptions) challenge whose passing will trigger God-Tier.

 **WTS** : Weird Time Shit. The Time Aspect’s chief use is for this, and it’s the reason very few compositions are unsalvageable; judicious use of WTS can get you out of just about anything. I’ll mention a class’ utility for Weird Time Shit.

 **SSC** : Space SuperCharge. Generally used with Seers, Witches/Warlocks, Bards, Rogues, and Thieves; regardless of alignment, Space comes with some really good buffs. SSC a Knight, watch him clear half the Battlefield in one flashstep. SSC a Rage-Aspect and you can probably take off a third of a Denizen’s health in one shot.

 **WVS** : Weird Void Shit. Newbies don’t tend to notice this, but Void-Aspects come with a lot of hidden buffs based on class. I’ll mention a class’s WVS when I give it a rundown.

 **3\. Character Generation Mechanics**

First things first: Select Number of Characters, minimum number three, default number four, maximum number twenty. General consensus is the sweet spot’s around six for a nice steady challenge curve; higher numbers mean you have to either be unreasonably lucky or pull off a Mobius Double Reacharound to get to the midgame, and that’s a little much to deal with for first-timers. Also, the final boss tends to just sort of look ridiculous for any numbers higher than ten.

Gender: What kind of bits your thirteen-year-olds have. Other than helping determine what kind of objects populate the character's home, its only real application is for picking which of the two options the character's Class is if they take a paired Class- Prince/Princess, Lord/Lady, Warlock/Witch, Page/Maid. Honestly the only one of these with a meaningful difference between the two is Page/Maid, and that's only if you're trying to make one of them Void or Time.

Class Selection: The list will be randomly populated, but you can reroll it. You’ll notice very, very fast that Heir always shows up. This is the nicest the game’s ever going to be to you, so enjoy it while it lasts. I personally advise rerolling until you see at least two of Knight, Soldier, Witch/Warlock, Maid/Page, or Bard.

Aspect Selection: Same thing, but this time Time and Space will be the two mandatory aspects. Really, there’s not a lot of them that are flat-out bad, but if it’s your first time you probably want at least one of Breath, Void, Blood, or Rage- they’re pretty hard to screw up and and decently powerful in the bargain.

Lunar Auspice: Leave it on random. If you’re trying to minmax like crazy you can refer to ArtisticCathedral’s relationship matrices on the subject, but it doesn’t have all that profound an effect on gameplay.

Ecto-Recombine: SELECT MANUAL, that's the whole point of you looking up this guide, yes? Now comes the fun part. Look up your Classes below. I’ll give you the rundown on what combinations are busted good, which ones are good, which ones are fun, and who they synergize with. I HIGHLY advise you don't read through them all at once- I'm no TentacleTherapist, but this is still about as far from succinct as you can be and still have an end in sight.


	2. Heir

_Great power comes unsought. Prove yourself worthy, and become who you were born to be. Show yourself unworthy, and fate will turn its back on you. ___

The only mandatory Class, and you won't regret them for an instant. Even if mismanaged to the absolute limit of possibility, Heirs are still never going to be your weakest party member. The only warning I have for first-timers is not to lean too hard on them- the other characters need echeladder rungs too, after all.

Progression: Slow*. On arrival to their Land, Heirs immediately skyrocket up their Echeladder, rendering them briefly much more powerful than the enemies they face. After that, they gain levels at a Slow rate.

Max Level: 11/10. Highest in the game. A well-fed Heir goes a long way towards making the game beatable on hard mode.

Preferred Alignment: P. The RNG seems to prefer aligning Heirs with Prospit, and generally their buffs are better than their debuffs.

Challenge: Prove Yourself: Heirs are given great power, but will constantly be put into situations where they question whether they are deserving of it- situations where self-doubt has a chance to steal the initiative from them. Heirs will be presented with situations where they can push their powers to the limit, risking death, to claim something valuable- success will unlock their maximum levels. Unlike in other games, these situations do have a very real chance of killing your character off, so this is by no means mandatory. Un-Challenged Heirs are still capable of respectable contributions to the final battle, but if you think you can pull it off? Go for it.

GTC: Accept the Mantle  
At one point, the game will present you with a situation where power can be attained through a sacrifice of self. You play these games, you know how sacrifices of self always work. While Sburb might break the mold on other levels, here it’s played pretty straight.

Specibus Affinity: Puppetkind. When controlled by an Heir, Puppetkinds will never refuse a command- yes, this means a first-level Heir can use an ultimate Puppetkind weapon with no penalties.  
Specific Specibus Affinity: Sceptrekind (Fast), Starekind (Ranged). When used by an Heir, Sceptrekind or Starekinds have a chance to perform a special form of Savage Upbraid: the Regal Remonstration or Stare Apparent. Instead of gaining a damage multiplier, they will Control enemies not immune to that status, and Befuddle all others (regardless of immunity.) Even the final boss can and will turn its attacks on itself for a turn if hit by either.

WTS: 6/5. Utterly fucking broken. On top of the fact they get access to upper-level Time skills immediately on entering the Medium, allowing boondollar and combat abuse on fantastic levels, on TOP of the fact that the Time aspect makes failing the Heir’s Challenge and God-Tier Challenge nigh-impossible, they have exclusive access to Temporal Replicollision. This attack literally re-creates the entire damn in-game universe in accordance with the character’s whims on top of massively damaging and debuffing every enemy within its temporal radius while resetting everyone’s cooldowns. Its cooldown is [playernumber]million years, to be fair, but hey, guess who can arrange for [playernumber]million years to pass in less than a day of in-game time? If you guessed “Any max-level Time player,” good job, gold star. This had to have been a developer tool they forgot to take out of the game proper.

WVS: 2/5. Heirs of Void get great passives, but not a lot of good active abilities. Their unique skill is Void-Warded: within a certain radius of the Heir, no long-distance detection abilities (like those of the Black Queen or Jack) will function, and most Mind, Light, Space, or Elemental abilities will automatically fail if used. Great for the early game, but in the late game Void-Warded starts to be more trouble than it’s worth; when half your buffs automatically fail, that’s a bit of a downer.

Class-Specific Skill: The [Aspect]y Thing. The power of the Heir's Aspect is channeled into a massive-radius AOE attack. Some debuff, some alter the environment, some buff, all do a respectable amount of damage, depressingly high chance of an Auto-Parry by any enemies with the ability. Mostly shines during combats with ludicrous numbers of low-ranking enemies.

 **Aspect Run-Down**

Broken Aspects: Time, no question, hands down, probably the single most busted class in the game. Breath is also broken, but to a degree much more in line with other busted classes- Heir Transparent makes you just this side of invulnerable, Breath of Life's a rez in a game that doesn't have a lot of them, and the inventively named Windy Thing is a magnificent crowd-clearer.

Good Aspects: Just about all of them, really. Heir was the first class designed, and it shows- they’re supposedly the chosen inheritors of their Aspect, and so the Aspects are all designed to play nice with them.

Fun Aspects: I recommend anyone’s first run after beating the game feature an Heir of Time just to watch the game scream for mercy. Heir of Mind’s fun if you like juggling passives, and Heirs of Light let you do ridiculous things like staring Denizens into killing themselves off. Heirs of Clockwork with the Puppetkind Specibus can make their own weapon upgrades, no matter how silly.

Bad Aspects: Heirs of Void aren’t recommended unless you’re using a large party, where Void-Warded will keep half of the Double Mobius Reacharound safe while you focus on the other half. Heirs of Rage are total experience hogs. Heirs of Chaos, Frost, Fire, or Lightning stand a decent chance of inadvertently killing their allies if they do their respective Things until the allies catch up on their echeladders. Again, though, there aren’t a lot of strictly bad Aspects for Heirs.


	3. Prince/Princess

_Ultimate power will never be yours. The question is how well you use what power you are given._

Meet the Heir’s slow cousin. By and large, the Prince/ss is just the Heir with the serial numbers filed off- and something like a 20% decrease in max level. Proper care and feeding can make a Prince/ss a respectable generalist, but they’ll never be real combat beasts or truly dangerous supporters. I like them a little better in a support role than as B-list combatants, personally. Toss ‘em a Ranged or Magickind and let ‘em throw buffs around.

Progression: Slow* On entering the Medium, Prince/sses get a small boost up their Echeladders. After that, they gain levels at a Slow rate. Yes, this is strictly worse than an Heir. Get used to that, it’s kind of a theme.

Max Level: 8/10. The Prince/ss still has a pretty respectable maximum level, but it tends to leave them -just- short of the point where Heirs get consistent access to all their best powers.

Preferred Alignment: None.

Challenge: Come To Terms. The Heir’s challenge in reverse, more or less: Prince/sses will be constantly presented with treasures that are -just- outside of their ability to grab without a great deal of suffering. The first time you have the brains to leave them where they are, you’ll unlock max-level techniques shortly afterward.

GTC: Confiscate The Crown  
This one’s pretty unique, and I’ll swear to god it’s the reason Prince/ss shows up so often when the Heir has one of the Aspects that can do harm as well as good. If the Heir dies at any point and is not ressurected, if the Prince/ss is capable of triumphing over the challenge that killed the Heir (no matter the cost), they’ll achieve god-tier.

Specibus Affinity: Puppetkind. When controlled by a Prince/ess, Puppetkinds refuse to obey orders roughly 50% as often. Yes, strictly worse than Heir, I did mention that.  
Specific Specibus Affinity: Sceptrekind (Fast). When used by Prince/ss, Sceptrekind have a chance to perform a special form of Savage Upbraid: the Regal Remonstration. Instead of gaining a damage multiplier, they will Control enemies not immune to that status, and Befuddle all others (regardless of immunity.) Even the final boss can and will turn its attacks on itself for a turn if hit by either. Unfortunately, the Prince/ss version has a chance to be Auto-Parried.

WTS: 4/5 Prince, 3/5 Princess. Their lower max level means they don’t have access to the higher-ranking techniques that render Heirs of Time utterly busted, but their access to decent techniques once they’ve entered their Lands makes them still pretty respectable Time players. Princes get access to Prince of Times, a very good damage/crit/accuracy buff, whereas Princesses get Line of Succession, a self-only auto-rez. If you’re dying by the time you have access to Line of Succession, you have bigger problems.

WVS: 4/5. Funnily enough, even though Prince/ss has the exact same WVS as Heir, they get a much higher rating. They still shut down detection, but they never get high enough level to flat-out shutdown Mind, Light, Space, or Elemental buffs. On balance, getting hit by a couple of extra attacks is -more- than offset by getting the ability to SSC back.

Class-Specific Skill: Command [Aspect]. Direct copy of the Heir’s [Aspect]y Thing, except thanks to lower max level it’ll never be as frequently accessible, as accurate, or as good. Yeah, not exactly the development team's finest hour, here.

 **Aspect Run-Down**

Broken Aspects: Prince/ss of Waves is really frightfully good. Life’s a Beach is a phenomenally good debuff, and while it only lasts for one or two combat rounds you don’t need it to if ANY of your other classes have a decent heavy attack. Combine that with Dauphin Tank and you’re a more or less immortal debuffing machine.

Good Aspects: Feel under no obligation to restart if you have a Prince/ss of Time or Space. They’re pretty damn respectable, and can WTS and SSC quite respectably. Mind fits nicely with the Prince/ss’ more background role, and while you don’t have access to All The Luck if they’re Light-Aspected, you’ll certainly have access to most of their good stuff. Void got covered under WVS: short form, yes.

Fun Aspects: Again, Mind and Clockwork make for decent ones. Hope’s also interesting if you want more of a combat monster- through judicious use of Hope Springs Eternal and Hope Lies Bleeding you can make your Prince/ss capable of keeping down enemies much stronger than them for a few rounds.

Bad Aspects: Prince/ss of Chaos is just asking for trouble for your Heir. Breath really demands something with a higher max level to make good use of it. Rock results in a just-this-side-of-immortal Denizen and a hellish fight.


	4. Knight

_You exist to defend your friends. Your Aspect is your weapon, your loyalty your life._

The original combat beast class. Though some builds of Knight come with some pretty nice buffs, in general if your Knight does something other than Aggress two turns in a row you’re doing something wrong. He (and it is usually a he) gets ridiculous combat abilities for a reason. Use them.

Progression: Fast.

Max Level: 7/10. Knights don’t take long to hit maximum level, and while their relatively low max level means they’re less useful in the final boss fight, they’re invaluable for the early, mid, and most of the lategame.

Preferred Alignment: D. Derse-aligned Knights get the passive chance to inflict debuffs when they attack.

Challenge: Noblesse Oblige. A Knight exists to protect his friends- not for himself. This Challenge’s mechanics take on a different form: the Knight’s Duty status will be on a Knight from the moment he enters the Medium to the moment he accomplishes his Challenge. While not partnered with another player, the Knight recieves a debuff to defensive stats. While partnered with another player, the Knight recieves a debuff to offensive stats- they’re disguised as buffs to the opposite side.  
On successfully protecting a party member from an attack that would have killed them, the Knight’s Duty debuffs disappear, and Knight’s Aegis activates, granting the Knight a 1-turn 20% stat buff each time he successfully Auto-Parries an attack aimed at a party member.

GTC: Soul of Chivalry. No way to obliquely reference this one. Character must die protecting all comrades from a vastly superior force- they'll be resurrected as a God-Tier on the Battlefield.

Specibus Affinity: Fastkind, Heavykind, Puppetkind. Heavykind weapons allow Knights to perform Multiattacks with their basic Aggress. Fastkind weapons allow Flurry attacks with their basic Aggress. Puppetkinds allow access to Mount Up, which results in a flat speed, damage, and mangrit/lass-sass buff.

Specific Specibus Affinity: Shieldkind (fast), Lancekind (heavy), and Horsekind (puppet). Shieldkinds get a passive chance to Auto-Parry attacks directed at party members, Lancekind gives an increased chance of Savage Upbraid, and Horsekind gives access to the Run Them Down combat operandi.

WTS: 4/5. A Knight of Time is very good at both of his jobs: protecting his allies and blowing his enemies the fuck up. They are forbidden to skip forward- that’s the Seers’ purview, natch- but from the moment you discover the glory that is Temporal Double Team and That’s Not How It Happened, you’re going to be very hard to stop.

WVS: 6/5. Utterly Broken. Shadow Step, Null Strike, Entropy’s Call: forget all of them. No, the thing that makes a Knight of Void turn the entire late-game into a joke is Astro-Parry, which at max level triggers automatically _every fucking time any enemy tries a Light, Space, Mind, or Elemental attack._ Yes, Astro-Parry triggers Knight’s Aegis. Yes, this means a Knight of Void will be operating at a consistent 180% buff against any of the above-Aspected Denizens and the final boss. Yes, Null Strike means he ignores all enemy Aegises and damage resistances. Yes, this means a Knight of Void, so long as he accomplishes his Challenge, stands a damn fine chance of soloing the game if you’re not on hardmode. (On Nightmare mode, he's more or less mandatory- Null Strike is just about the only way to consistently damage the Nightmare final boss.)

Class Specific Skill: Knight’s Aegis (covered above), [Aspect] Step. All Knights have access to short-range in-combat teleportation accompanied by a small Aspect effect. SSC them and watch one flickering step become several thousand flashes faster than the eye can see, each a separate attack.

 **Aspect Run-Down**

Busted: Knight of Void. Christ Almighty, Knight of Void. Combine with ANY decent Time-aspect and you can literally leave your other characters twiddling their thumbs on their Medium entry points.

Good: Knights of Time, Chaos, Elements, Rage, Space to a lesser extent. Big damage, big prizes.

Fun: Knights of Blood are great fun mostly because Blood Will Have Blood lets them counter-attack for free whenever they auto-parry, and their Knights’ Aegis gets spread across their entire party via Sanguinary Ties- who needs an SSC when the entire damn party’s operating at 200% thanks to one guy going on defense? Knights of Light make great use of On A Pale Horse, and Knights of Heart are defensive machines.

Bad: Knights of Mind get great accuracy bonuses, but that’s about it. Pass. Knights of Hope have that god-awful “become more effective as you become closer to death” effect, which while damned good combined with a Seer, Witch/Warlock, or Bard of Light is really goddamned bad for a class that’s supposed to be keeping people from dying.


	5. Mage

_You can feel the hand of your Aspect in the very fabric of the Medium, and call its power forth to destroy your enemies._

Wouldn’t be an RPG if there wasn’t a Mage class, now would it? It’s everything you’d expect: squishy as hell, but it’s got enough nukes to destroy the world a second time over. Once teamed up with a Knight, Heir, or someone else who can take some of the damage for them, Mages will be your primary damage dealers. Kind of boring mechanics-wise, to be honest.

Progression: Slow.

Max Level: 5/10. Mages don’t have a lot of levels to play with. They make up for this by becoming phenomenally more dangerous with each level they gain.

Preferred Alignment: None.

Challenge: To Preserve the Gift. Mages will encounter Consorts capable of being taught basic magical prowess. If the Mage shephards one of these Consorts to the top of its (short) Echeladder, they’ll be rewarded with unlocked max-level skills- and better yet, with not having to keep the damn thing alive any longer.

GTC: Rite of Ascension. Unique GTC: in any game with a Mage, every set of Consort Ruins will contain a well-hidden clue or powerful item, the alchemization of all of which in the Ruins of the Mage’s land will guide them down the path to God Tier. Fair warning, this is grist-intensive as all hell.

Specibus Affinity: Magickind, Puppetkind. Mages get a passive damage boost to all Magickind weapons, and a defense bonus when using Puppetkind weapons. Yeah, I know, uninventive, but the class does what the class does.

Specific Specibus Affinity: Wandkind (magic), Starekind (ranged). When using either of the above, Mages have a roughly 25% chance per attack to also perform a Sting of [Aspect], typically doubling the attack’s damage and possibly inflicting a random status effect.

WTS: 3.5/5. Less of a strict damage-dealer than a Mage usually is, a Mage of Time tends to be a buff and debuff machine. The reason for their .5 is that during the midgame they get access to We’re Going To Need More Wands, which multiplies every single one of their attacks [playernumber]fold. Mages of Time go a long way towards making twenty-player games winnable if you get them through most of the Mobius Reacharound before the prototypings can really stack up.

WVS: 4/5. The Mage of Void isn’t quite as broken as his Knightly counterpart, but he’ll still make the game sit up and take notice. Hungering Void doesn’t make up for Astro-Parry, nothing could, but it’ll still keep the party pretty well insulated from a wide range of boss attacks while the Mage is throwing His Dark Materials, Caress of the Horrorterrors, and Bad Things Happen At Night around.

Class Specific Skill: [Aspect]-Wreathed. Decent length cooldown, surrounds the Mage with their Aspect for a few combat rounds, amplifying all [Aspect] effects. Resist the temptation to use this during a fight with the Mage’s denizen- it will work on their attacks too. Nothing quite as embarrassing as setting off Doom-Wreathed against Thanatos and watching everyone -besides- your mage drop with his first attack.

 **Aspect Run-Down**

Busted: Mages of Chaos, so long as you have a Seer, Witch/Warlock, or Bard of Light. Set off All the Luck, or if you’re feeling brave Most Of The Luck, trigger Chaos-Wreathed, and go to town. The Centre Cannot Hold stands a decent chance of ending just about any number of non-boss enemies this way, and the Unmaking is one of the few attacks that will get through all known boss Aegises.

Good: The various Elemental aspects all make good mages, as does Void. Rage, Blood, and Life are also surprisingly good. Doom is the only one of the debuff-flavored Mages I’d feel comfortable reccomending; Doom-Wreathed may be the poor man’s All The Luck, but if you don’t have someone in your party who can provide it to other players it’s a godsend. Also, come on, their primary damage-dealing operandi is You Are Basically Fucked Here.

Fun: There are buffing mages. There are debuffing mages. Heart, Hope, Light, Mind. They’re certainly acceptable in the right circumstances, but there are other classes who do their jobs -much- better. Mages of Space pull off one hell of an SSC, but can’t do much after they’ve done so. Mages of Light are just a giant reason to wish you'd have gotten a Seer or Bard instead.

Bad: Mages of Chaos if you -don’t- have a Light buff-providing player. They’re more than likely to kill the entire team off. Breath, Rock, and Clockwork are just... no. Don’t even bother.


	6. Page/Maid

_Alone among your friends, you do not master your Aspect; your Aspect masters you. Persevere, and discover there is a power in service that puts even the mightiest command to shame._

Ah, the Servant. Experienced players consistently rank it among the highest-tier classes in the game, while beginners might be inclined to leave them to rot in the back row. With proper care and feeding, they’ll put the average Heir to shame, but that proper care and feeding’s a minor nightmare at lower levels. You’ll be doing a -lot- of Absconding before your Servant meets up with one of the other payers, but by the end of the game? Fun times.

Progression: Glacial. Sburb follows the typical exponential experience curve model for most characters- level four takes twice as long as level three takes twice as long as level two, you get the idea. Yeah, for Servants? Five takes eight times as long as four, which takes four times as long as three, which takes twice as long as two, which means that yes, your Servant will still be gaining levels in the lategame.

Max Level: 10/10. Just under Heirs in sheer number of echeladder rungs. Combine this with Glacial progression, and you understand why most first-timers just see Servants as dead weight.

Preferred Alignment: P. Prospit rewards those who stand and wait. Hint hint.

Challenge: Service Unquestioning. Pages and Maids are repeatedly placed in circumstances where they can choose to act of their own accord rather than obey the will of another- the game keeps track of how many times a player chooses to follow their Aspect’s lead rather than their own desires. Note that you can’t cheese this by creating a character whose chief desire is Avoid Conflict (Manual Shipping Matrix setup is insanely long, complex, and just go check out ArtisticCathedral’s faq already- suffice it to say you can do this, but I feel it takes all the fun out of the game) as the game checks for whether the character followed their own desires before it checks whether they followed the Aspect’s lead. If, at the point they have entered the Battlefield, their following percentage is above 75%, they’ll unlock high-level techniques.  
GTC: Even Unto Death. The game’s way of repaying you for the frequently ridiculous Challenge, I feel. If the Servant’s following percentage is above 90%, and they die performing a challenge after entering their Land, they’ll be resurrected as a God-Tier on the Battlefield.

Specibus Affinity: Heavykind, Rangedkind. Servants have a small accuracy buff when using either.  
Specific Specibus Affinity: Lancekind (Heavy) (Page), Glovekind (Fast) (Maid). If a Page misses a Lancekind attack, he’ll trigger Tilting at Windmills, giving the party a small accuracy buff for one round. A Maid has access to the Savage Upbraid Backhand of the Low-Blooded when using Glove or Palmkind, which deals 5x damage as well as inflicting Stun.

WTS: 5/5 Page, 4.5/5 Maid. Servants of Time are very, very good. The game gets flat-out meta on you with their WTS; you know how most other classes have access to That’s Not How It Happened at mid-levels, functioning more or less as a retroactive quicksave? If you get a Servant of Time up to the appropriate levels, they don’t even bother with the quicksave- the character will actually just advise its party as to the correct course of action. If you’ve given them enough levels, they’ll just deal with the problem before the rest of the players arrive, _without any input from you._ The reason for their discrepancy in score is the nature of their class-specific abilities. Pages of Time, from a fairly low level, have access to Time To Burn, which lets them turn their glacial leveling pace into something much more reasonable. Maids, meanwhile, have to earn their levels the old-fashioned way, in return getting one of the best Once-Per-Game abilities in Sburb if they hit the maximum.  
Pretty Maids All In A Row is a supercharged version of Temporal Double Team that summons an entire legion of alternate-timeline Maids to help out in a fight. This is one of the only ways to save a game where you’ve inadvertently prototyped something you REALLY shouldn’t have other than a harlequin, incidentally.

WVS: 3/5. Their passives are good. Their passives are very, very good. A Servant of Void is more or less invincible, and can put up some pretty good damage numbers, they just don’t have a whole lot of triggerable abilities outside of Entropy’s Herald. Servants of Void are more or less fire-and-forget missiles- put them on Auto-Aggress, give them a decent weapon, and make a sandwich or something- they’ll solo their Lands without much effort.

Class-Specific Skill: Servant of [Aspect]. Yeah, now you know where all the faqs get Servant for both classes from. Anyway, enemies aligned with the appropriate Aspect will never initiate hostilities with the Servant, up to and including their Denizen, allowing them to pick and choose their fights. Not the best, but mandatory for getting them out of their first Land.

 **Aspect Run-Down**

Busted: Page of Time lets you get rid of the one thing that supposedly balances the class. It’s good. It’s very, very, VERY good.

Good: Servants of Rage are more or less heat-seeking missiles by the time they hit the Battlefield. Servants of Light have a random chance to give their party All The Luck, and their self-buffs increase the chance of it happening. Servants of Hope get access to Believe In Yourself, which effectively trivializes most Challenges as well as serving as the mother of all buffs.

Fun: Servants of Heart get Trust Your Instincts, which is more or less if Believe In Yourself and All The Luck had a baby and that baby was Savage Upbraids for the rest of the fight. Less wide-ranging, but damned if it’s not fun to whip out. Servants of Space have Flip It Turnways to act as an instant-reaction That’s Not How It Happened. And Servants of Breath get access to all of Breath’s neat toys, just without the Windy Thing to make them better damage-dealers.

Bad: Servants of the various elements are more or less just there to make Absconding from annoyingly-aspected enemies easier. Servants of Mind are more or less barred from achieving God-Tier, and find achieving their Challenge extremely difficult. Servants of Clockwork are more or less just slightly more powerful NPCs.


	7. Bard

_Sing your Aspect high, sing your Aspect low, sing it to friend or sing it to foe, but sing it well. When you go, you’ll have to face the Music, and it cares about -nothing- but whether you carried the tune._

To steal a line from CoruscatingGreen’s Sburban Mythology faq, the Bard’s the bridge between the Royal Cycle of classes (Heir, Prince, Knight, Mage, Servant) and the Wyld Cycle (Thief, Rogue, Sylph, Witch, Seer) - still welcome inside the castle walls, but not entirely of them. To put things in a slightly -less- pretentious way, the Bard’s either the most intuitive of the weird classes or the weirdest of the intuitive classes. Bards deal in buffs and buff accessories- they’re a damn solid bit of the backfield.

Progression: Normal.

Max Level: 4/10. Bards max out on levels very quickly. Considering their chief function is to buff party members, this makes it pretty critical you have them team up with someone else fast. Bards don’t solo Denizens well.

Preferred Alignment: D. Who ever heard of a decent artist who -wasn’t- on the dark side? Also, meaningful. Until passing their Challenge, Prospitian Bards can’t buff more than one of their teammates at a time, and Dersite Bards can’t buff themselves.

Challenge: Feel the Music. You can write music you think is good, or you can write music your audience thinks is good. Not both, until you feel the music. Taking an action (preferably musically themed) radically in-line with the desires of your Aspect will result in the breakdown of the aforementioned barrier and the unlocking of max-level techniques.

GTC: Sympathy for the Devil. Not available on Easy Mode, hypothetically possible but not gonna fucking happen on Hard Mode, suicide on Nightmare Mode unless you're a prototyping genius. Minor spoilers follow.  
At a certain point in the game the Archagent gets freed from his desk, and will head to LO[$INITIAL1$]A[$INITIAL2$], looking for a player to kill- if there’s a Bard in the session, he’ll head for them first. Given that he’s so desperately behind schedule, and not much of a fan of his superiors anyway, he’s willing to make a deal. Won’t go into all the details, but to quote the player’s guide:  
Kiddo, getcher voice warmed up, and wring your modus out  
Archagent’s come to LO[$INITIAL1$]A[$INITIAL2$], and the Horrorterrors shout.  
“Win this jam, a power beyond most is yours to have  
But if you lose, he’ll shoa you all his stabs....”

Specibus Affinity: Rangedkind. Bards take reduced damage whenever using a Rangedkind weapon- useful for keeping them alive.

Specific Specibus Affinity: You’d think there’d be a whole host of musical jokes in here, but no, the Bard has none. This is your hint that if you’re having your Bard Aggress without buffing himself to high heaven first you’re doing something wrong.

WTS: 3/5. Whoever named the abilities enjoys their obscure references, and whoever actually came up with their mechanics doesn’t share the love. Time In A Bottle’s a renamed That’s Not How It Happened that costs twice as much, Restauraunt at the End of the Universe is a passable heal that inexplicably costs a boonbond to use, and as near as I can tell Autoavus doesn’t do a goddamn thing. The best ability they have is the Train To Morrow, a Temporal Double Team that works on the entire party. The Bard of Time isn’t -bad-, but I get the serious sense that they realized giving an entire team the buffs a Time player usually has access to would have been more broken than the Heir of Time.

WVS: 5/5. Three words, one terrible pun, the ability that makes the Bard of Void an absolute defensive powerhouse. A Void Dance. Flat 75% chance, applied before any other defensive effects, of avoiding all damage from an attack. Lonely At The Top can only go on one person at a time, and disables all other buffs, but a 100% boost to all stats and damage is not to be sneered at. Just don’t put it on a Time player- they’re a little reliant on buffing themselves.

Class-Specific Skill: Symphony of [Aspect]. Think the Heir’s [Aspect]y Thing only single-target, much more focused, and accompanied by some damn fine music. Cooldown’s crazy long, but it’s the reason why the Bard actually has a shot at taking out their Denizen- it does every status effect in the book possible to same-Aspected enemies.

 **Aspect Run-Down**

Busted: Bard of Space. An SSC that can go on the whole damn party. Warp Tour together Pompatus of Love, Run Straight Down, Space Jam, and It’s Not Easy Being Green. (If you haven’t unlocked that last one yet, just stick with Long Way Home.) Congratulations. You can do that once per fight. It’ll work on the whole damn party. It’ll last for as long as the longest running buff in the set, and oh hey, It’s Not Easy Being Green and Long Way Home both last the whole fight. One turn’s casting brings most stats to 200%, incoming damage cut to a third, and all attacks can trigger a Slam Jam. This goes on everyone in the party. It says something that this is only the -second- most busted Space class.

Good: Basically all of them. No Aspect is entirely without useful buffs, and the ones that are a little light on them get extras instead. Rage hands out free attacks like they’re candy, Doom tosses around random debuffs in addition, Life does a whole hell of a lot of healing as a bonus- really, you can’t go wrong with a Bard.  
Fun: See above.

Bad: Not so much bad as boring: Breath, Elemental, and Chaos Bards don’t have as many toys to play with; you’ll just [Aspect] up your allies’ armor and weapons, then reapply over the course of the battle. Still damn nice, but not that interesting.


	8. Thief

_A part of you knows you’ll never have enough. It won’t stop you from trying to get it all._

Meet the Knight’s cousin by way of larceny. At the start of any given fight, a Thief’s not going to be your heaviest hitter, but every time they debuff an enemy they buff themselves in equal measure. At the start of a fight, you want Knights and Heirs covering for the Thief. By the end of a long one, the Thief will be covering them.

Progression: Fast. Thieves are more or less going to be your designated Denizen-fighters, and so they need to get strong in a hurry- yeah, yeah, most of them offer a Choice, but trust me when I say killing them’s generally the easiest way to deal with them.

Max Level: 8/10. Comparable to the Prince/ss in most regards here.

Preferred Alignment: D. Thieves -are- creatures of the shadows, after all. No mechanical differences, though.

Challenge: Seize The Moment. Theft is the art of knowing the right moment to act in order to prevent another from reacting. Thieves, uniquely, have their Challenge tied not to combat mechanics but to the Shipping Matrix: they will be given the opportunity to steal the initiative from another and in so doing fill an Alignment Cask without any input from the other party.  
Basically if you don’t make your Thief a collossal dick you’re probably going to succeed at the Challenge.

GTC: Let’s All Rock The Heist  
Following the trend of Challenges leading into GTCs, the Thief’s God Tier Challenge is to circumvent a major game mechanic with the assistance of at least one other party member with a filled Alignment Cask. Avoid a boss, cheat a Denizen, alchemize an endgame item via shenanigans, set the game to Easy or Hard mode- as long as it’s done by the Thief, the first time they drop they’ll come back as a God Tier. Fair warning: it’s difficult to confirm given the arcane nature of the source code, but many players have reported circumventing multiple mechanics will result in the game pulling out all the stops to end you. If you’re going for an easy mode run, I -highly- advise either playing the entire thing straight outside of the Thief’s GTC or just leaving them normal tier- nothing quite like having the Archagent hitting people before they meet their Denizens for the first time.

Specibus Affinity: Fastkind, Magickind. When using either Specibus, Thieves have a chance to randomly Quick Attack- an attack that ignores all auto-parry derivatives.

Specific Specibus Affinity: Dicekind (magic), Cardkind (fast). Loaded Dice causes all Dicekind attacks to be rolled (1+ n/4, rounding down, where N is the number of Brigand’s Gambits performed in a given fight) times with only the highest roll counting, while Marked Deck causes any Savage Upbraids to inflict status effects dependent on the hand drawn.

WTS: 5/5. Thieves of Time aren’t completely busted, but they’re damned close. Time Of Your Life is a great self-heal that also does impressive damage, Crime of Kronus makes enemies deal pathetic damage, and their bog-standard Steal Time means that by a few rounds into a fight everyone will be hitting the enemy twice for every once he hits them, while the Thief is getting off four attacks in the same time. They have to pass their Challenge to recieve the skill that almost puts them over the top, though: Deja-Fu functions as a passive That’s Not How It Happened that triggers _every time an attack does less than average damage._

WVS: 2/5. No Thief’s a dead loss, but the Thief of Void’s chief ability is that they can steal hidden abilities. Unfortunately, there aren’t a lot of non Void-aspected enemies that have them, and the most common Void ability for enemies to have is Void-Warded. There’s a few gimmick builds that have the Thief of Void encounter a lategame boss early, steal Void-Warded, abscond, and later let the Mage/Heir/Sylph/Seer annihilate them from long range, but outside of those the Thief of Void’s not particularly useful outside their Land.

Class Specific Skill: What’s Yours Is Mine. Every Thief has access to the special combat operandi Steal [Aspect]. Every time it is performed, it will debuff the enemy and buff the Thief in a manner consistent with the aspect- a few aspects allow multiple types of debuff.

 **Aspect Run-Down**

Busted: Light. Thieves of Light, after two or three rounds of combat, will have a perma-cast All the Luck on themselves. Combine that with Loaded Dice or Marked Deck, I’m pretty sure the only thing that could even hypothetically beat it in a straight-up fight is a Knight of Void. And since it’s a Light-Aspect, achieving God Tier is almost a given. The Nightmare Mode boss, the single most dangerous enemy in the entire game, has about a 50/50 chance to be soloed by a well-built Thief of Light provided he hasn’t been prototyped more than six times. If you get a Thief of Light, you might as well just set the game to Hard Mode at the earliest opportunity: you’re going to win, it’s just a question of how.

Good: Time, Life, Breath, Heart, Hope. Each of them has a selection of different things to buff/debuff, allowing you to tailor your approach to different bosses. Breathtaking Flourish lives up to its name, Heartbreaker lets you reset Shipping Matrices at will, the Thief of Life can make even a Knight of Rage work to keep up in terms of sheer damage-dealing potential, and if you do not fistpump the first time you ever get to use From The Jaws Of Defeat you have no soul.

Fun: Blood has an entire assortment of vampire puns that collaborate to make its Thieves just this side of immortal. Doom allows you to select enemies’ elemental weaknesses. For a change, the Elemental set are also pretty entertaining- they tend specialize around one stat, but they do an interesting set of alterations to it. Clockwork, though rare, causes game mechanics to stop working for enemies- wierd, and kind of counterintuitive, but if you ever wanted your Thief to mechanically be an Ogre it’s the class for you.

Bad: Void has been gone over already, and Rage just doesn’t synergize as well as Life does to create a murder-thief.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BACK


	9. Rogue

Rogue  
 _No deck would be complete without the Fool. What your friends are not, you are- and you’ll be there when they need it._

Sburb’s single greatest act of kindness towards the new player, and its greatest fuck-you towards the experienced ones. See that operandus “Rogue’s Hand?” Here’s the good news: that can produce almost any ability in the game at no cost. Here’s the bad news: there are several thousand abilities in the game, maybe two hundred of them are any good, of those maybe a few dozen are good in the majority of situations, and Rogue’s Hand selects which one it produces randomly.

Progression: Normal. The Rogue keeps pace rather neatly.

Max Level: N/A. The Rogue’s max level is a function of the average maximum levels of the whole party.

Preferred Alignment: D. Rogues tend towards being creatures of the shadows. Derse-Aligned Rogues get stealth bonuses, while Prospit-aligned Rogues get bonuses to Savage Upbraid probability.

Challenge: From the Shadows  
Hands up, who’s played Ultimate Fairytale 6? Okay, you all know exactly what this one’s a shout out to. There’s a 1/16 chance any time a player not in the Rogue’s party reaches critical health that the Rogue will suddenly leap into their party and pouncemurder whatever had just brought them to said state, having succeeded at their Challenge somewhere offscreen. The character will make a throwaway reference to having had ‘adventures’ while they were out if asked what they were doing.

GTC: Let’s Blow This Thing And Go Home

Alright, going to get this out of the way right here right now: this GTC is a dick move.  
After the Rogue enters the Medium, any time a character dies other than the rogue (without the Rogue present in the party) there is a 2% chance that the Rogue, having become God Tier offscreen, will fly in and save the day, incidentally rezzing the dead character.  
This chance drops by 99% per other god-tier characters in the party. With one other God-Tier, the odds are .02%, with two .0002, you get the idea. Some people claim that making sure the dying character is Light or Mind-aspected means the probability rises, but even then there’s no sure thing.

Specibus Affinity: Fastkind, Rangedkind.  
Specific Specibus Affinity: Daggerkind (fast) Pistolkind (ranged). Daggerkinds allow the Savage Upbraid Old School’d, potentially multiplying attack damage by 1-6x, while Pistokinds auto-Savage Upbraid if they are the first Aggression in any given Strife. (yes, if your Rogue has an Aspect that gives them a quick-draw analogue, this is very, very good.)

WVS: 4/5. Pretty damn good. The Rogue of Void’s got regular access to Null Strike’s big brother, Hidden Flaw, which not only ignores aegises itself but also causes the party’s next attack to do so. Rogue of Void plus Mage of just about anything outright trivializes basilisk and giclops encounters, as well as making defensively-prototyped endgame bosses much more bearable.

WTS: 1/5. Terrible. The whole reason a Time-Aspect is mandatory (as far as anyone can tell) is for player access to That’s Not How It Happened or one of its derivatives. Rogues don’t control when their WTS abilities trigger. You might think there’s nothing quite as irritating as having That’s Not How It Happened trigger after a Peerless Aggrievance, but wait until the first time your Heir dies and you can’t TNHIH them back to life. There’s a reason the Rogue of Life is considered Sburb’s iron-man challenge. In fairness, though, they do have access to one ability that means you shouldn’t feel compelled to restart if your Time-Aspect’s a Rogue (so long as you’ve got either a very good Knight or a very good Bard/Witch/Sylph, of course). Fatebreaker allows a Rogue of Time to turn a single beta timeline they’ve previously explored into the Alpha timeline. Sburb speedruns abuse the fuck out of this and Thieves of Light- properly done you can be fighting the final boss within minutes of the second of the two entering the Medium.

Class-Specific Skill: Rogue’s Hand. While Rogues can over the course of the game use every combat operandus available to their Aspect, they only have controllable access to about a third of them. The rest appear through use of the Rogue’s Hand combat operandus, which randomly selects one of them to utilize. Inconveniently, this includes many of the more powerful utility operandi like All The Luck, Blood For Bruxhas, and Space Jam. On the upside, when a new player doesn’t know what the hell to do, hammering Rogue’s Hand for a few rounds is a good way to reveal potential weaknesses.

 **Aspect Run-Down**

Busted: Rogue of Clockwork. One of the Rogue of Clockwork’s consistently accessible operandi is Fearsome Warrior. On anyone but the Rogue it’s just a flat boypluck/lass-sass buff. On the Rogue, it stacks up to three times. Fearsome^2 Warrior doubles the boypluck/lass-sass buff and increases all damage dealt. Fearsome^3 Warrior takes the Rogue of Clockwork to God-Tier stats if God Tier has not been achieved, and to God Tier Knight of Rage stats if it has. That alone would make it good.  
What makes it busted is what happens if you try Rogue’s Hand while under the effects of Fearsome^3 Warrior. All roads lead to the LOCAG Cannon, which is a once-per-fight attack competitive with most of the offensive [Aspect]y Things that will cost the Rogue no resources whatsoever.

Good: Rogues of Void, Chaos, Hope, and if you’ve got a large enough group of players, Heart. If you hammer Rogue’s Hand hard, the above will render enemies irrelevant, whip out massive amounts of damage, buff your party to high heaven, or guarantee you don’t have to worry about Shipping Matrix-related debuffs so long as there are regular strifes, respectively.

Fun: Rogues of Time are mandatory if you’re taking one of the Iron Man challenges. Rogues of Light are exercises in entertaining RNG-cursing. I’ve had one twice and I’m -still- not sure what the hell a Rogue of Mind does.

Bad: If I didn’t list them under Good or Broken, they’re bad. Hell, even the good Rogues are just a bad streak on the RNG away from sucking hard.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> update schedules: for the weak!


	10. Sylph

_Others wield their aspect, command, or manipulate, or serve it. You are –of- it, and it is of you, and together you will bring its power into the Medium for all to behold._

The Sylph is frankly weird, and is noticeably so from before entering the Medium. They tend to have one of the Shipping Matrix related debuffs, they usually live quite a goddamn ways out from the rest of the characters, and they frequently treat the supernatural as commonplace. Gameplay-fluff synergy at work; the sylph works a little like the Geomancers of Ultimate Fairytale Tactics, with operandi largely dependent on where the battle is being held. In their own Lands, they’re tiny destroyers of worlds. In others’ Lands and the Battlefield, they’re largely dependent on the fraymotifs they have with other party members.

Progression: Fast. Sylphs race to the top of their echeladders shortly after entering the Medium. Buuuuuut...

Max Level: 3/10. The Sylph echeladder wouldn’t reach the ceiling, let alone the second floor. As such, Sylphs are at their strongest early game- late-game, they end up using their percentage-based buffs and debuffs almost exclusively as dedicated support characters.

Preferred Alignment: None. The contents of a Sylph’s dreams tend to have less to do with their moons and more to do with their lands.

Specibus Affinity: Rangedkind, Magickind. When using either of the above specibi, there’s about a 20% chance of firing off an [Aspect]-borne attack, allowing the free use of a combat operandus next turn.  
Specific Specibus Affinity: Doorkind (Heavy), Windowkind (Fast). One of the rare cases of SSA being entirely separate from SA. When using a Doorkind or Windowkind Sylphs will occasionally perform the Savage Upbraid Gate Of [Aspect], which will either be a Summary Negation or a x8 [Aspect]-elemental crit depending on whether an enemy’s vulnerable to Summary Negations.

Challenge: Of Magic and Mortals. One of the easier Challenges. One of the Sylph’s consistently available abilities is Feel the Land, and while it’s not immediately obvious it can be used on allies it can be. If used on someone other than the Sylph in their own Land, Feel the Land will increase their experience and ability gain for that strife 2x- if they gain an echeladder rung while under the effect of Feel the Land, it will unlock the Sylph’s max-level abilities.

GTC: Of Fae And Fate. Tremendous dick move, this one. Remember how there’s a Shipping Matrix related debuff on the Sylph from the start of the game? Know how Shipping Matrix debuffs typically require the services of a Heart-aspected character to get rid of? Yeah, well, sucks to be you. You need to get your Sylph to at least one filled Alignment Cask before entering the Medium, and from there have the Sylph spend no time operating without being in proximity to the cask-fill-ee. In return, if/when the Sylph drops, the fill-ee’s tears will bring them back to life as full God-Tier. Little more mythic than Sburb usually is, so I’ll turn you over to CoruscatingGreen’s Sburban Mythology Faq’s relevant section.

“So. Sylph God Tier. Weird shit, innit? That first requirement’s bullshit, the second one’s not. Only way it makes any sense is if the second one was meant to be bullshit too. Sburb’s nice about consistency that way. So, let’s take a quick look. Which class is the least in-tune with the Sylph’s mythology? Reminder, we’re talking about an airy, insubstantial, mystical being made half of magic. You might guess Heir or Prince/Princess, but they’ve got their own ‘magic of rulership’ thing going on. Bards, Bards sing about everything. Even the Rogue and Thief dance between the mundane world and the mysterious shadows. No, the one class that has the least probability of having a single fucking thing in common with the Sylph is the one that’s entirely rooted in the muddy, bloody Now.”  
“Yep. The Knight.”  
“Knights and Sylphs occupy entirely different realms, but you think about it for a second and it starts making sense. Half the Knightly stories in the world have to do with finding a Sylphly presence, and despite the frankly batshit commands of the Sylph, carrying them out. A lot of the time they fail. Sometimes they succeed, and in succeeding (waaaaait for it!) Ascend. Maybe it’s the Sylph who rises, maybe it’s the Knight who rises, but someone’s got to carry Excalibur, after all.”  
“TyranicallyAwesome did some digging. And between us we’re pretty sure that the Sylph God Tier Challenge was originally called The Fae and the Knight. Probably got changed because Skaianet thought the reference was too obvious. Because the one character who –won’t- find it consistently impossible to fill an alignment cask with the Sylph before hitting the Medium is the Knight.”

I’m honestly torn sometimes as to whether Skaianet were misunderstood geniuses or just insanely lucky idiots.

WVS: 2-4/5. The Sylph of Void’s not gonna hit god tier barring someone being a god of prototyping and manual shipping alignment; Void shipping debuff plus Sylph shipping debuff means they’re gonna be goddamn creepy. Outside of that, though, Or Not To Be is the best stealth skill in the game, From All, Nothing is competitive with most offensive [Aspect]y Things at the cost of no way to reduce friendly fire, and From Nothing, All is one of only two mass rez abilities in the game. Don’t be surprised if you find yourself having to use them in sequence, though.

WTS: 3/5. Mostly on the back of Everywhen. Proper use of Everywhen makes a Sylph unhittable, useful since they tend to have a shortage of boypluck/lass-sass, and close enough to omniscient besides. The catch is that they can’t use Everywhen and That’s Not How It Happened in succession- you have to pick between the sylph’s survivability and everyone else’s.  
Class-Specific Ability: [Aspect]borne. For purposes of game mechanics the Sylph is treated as a [Aspect]-elemental entity regardless of additional aegises. You want to make a Knight of Void even more ridiculously powerful than they are already, stick them in a party with a Sylph of Light, Space, Mind, or any of the Elemental aspects, and have the Sylph auto-aggress the Knight with a low-ranking weapon.

 **Aspect Rundown**

Busted: Sylphs of Mind. It’s a once-per-game ability, yes, but Tactical Genius guarantees every attack for the next five turns will be a Savage Upbraid that deals maximum damage, every enemy attack capable of missing will miss and do minimum damage otherwise, and all buffs will function at maximum efficiency. Its baby brother, [$PlayerNumber$] As One, only bumps up the chances of all of the above by 25%. And can be performed in every battle. Get a Sylph of Mind to God Tier and even the weakest party will be dragged screaming to victory. (Knight of Heart’s probably your best bet to pull that one off, incidentally.)

Good: Sylphs of Space, Time, Life, Rock, and Chaos are all capable of avoiding/soaking a few hits in a strife and covering a Seer’s knowledge gaps besides. Plus, the latter three’s Let There Be [Aspect] serve as damn effective heal/damage operandi. The Sylph of Space gets Where It Hurts instead, one of the better debuffs in the game.

Fun: Sylph of Heart. Congratulations. You are now learning how Manual Shipping Grid Alignment works with a reward of bigger damage numbers. Plus, you get the Tangle Buddy Beam. Tell me you do not love the Tangle Buddy Beam and I am going to call you a soulless monster. Sylphs of Doom get access to GALD AJSODTA, which is a Rogue’s Hand knock-off good for desperate situations, and their Ghostly Aegis gives you access to a lot of ways to fuck around with the game. Walking through walls is damned useful if you’re on Normal or Easy in terms of getting Jack what he’s looking for, and not half bad otherwise. Sylphs of Chaos are one of the three classes with access to Empowered Chaos Dunk, and the only one of them that can minimize friendly fire damage from it via Ride The Blastwave. Pull that one off with Space Jam active for an easter egg from the developers.

  
Bad: Sylph of Rage. You can’t target any of your own attacks and most of your buffs cause berserk on top of it. That shit gets old. Fast. Sylph of Blood’s less than spectacular too.


	11. Self Indulgent Bullshit Intermission

So. People of AO3. As you lot have tragically failed me in my arbitrary nigh-impossible challenge (again: the Sylph of Doom has an ability titled GALD AJSODTA, which acts as a Rogue's Hand knock-off, and also possess the Ghostly Aegis) I find myself gearing up to write the Seer's page. This bugs the hell out of me, as more or less by accident I've stayed within the bonds of canon thus far (still insufferably smug about the fact I don't need to retcon the Knight's GTC) and we're not going to see God Tier Rose getting up to her shit for quite some time. Sorrow, etc.

But hey, gotta get to work on it eventually. The issue is that I have a tragically self-indulgent idea kicking around my head, a quick little What If scenario involving one moment of nervous tension resulting in one of the trolls achieving God Tier. If this is to y'all's liking, I can delay the Seer by a bit and treat you to that one.

And so, having written it, it's time to start tinkering with the Seer.


	12. The Grimdark And You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> brought to you by Stalling for Time

So, someone asked me for an intermission on grimdarkening. At first, I wasn’t going to cover it, as I figured it was a little far afield from the whole character creation thing this guide was for. Then someone directed me to TentacleTherapist’s entire section on grimdark: Appendix 2, Optional Mechanics, Subsection Five, Mechanisms By Which Grim Darkness May Be Attained.

“Don’t.”

Having discovered this was the definitive guide’s stance, I went to my other standby. Here’s his notes on the subject.

 “If you didn’t see it coming a mile away, you are exactly the kind of stupid shit it was designed to guarantee didn’t win the game. Christ on a fucking cracker, people, this is not complex. If you’re busy alchemizing weapons out of tentacle demons you officially forfeit all rights to be surprised when they start fucking you over. Metaphorically. Yes I know you’ve all written several thousand words on the subject of what you imagined happened behind the scenes when your Witch of Doom went grimdark and how it set your little prepubescent nethers aglow with excitement, and I thank Saint Gaider of the Terribly Conceived, Designed, And Executed Romance Option regularly that none of you bastards were on the design team.”

While my esteemed colleagues cover the key points, perhaps a bit of elaboration’s worthwhile. So. Those of you who start fiddling around with alchemizers will discover some entertaining combinations for weaponkinds, some of which do frankly ridiculous amounts of damage. However, none of them compare to the trap alchemizations. If you alchemize a weaponkind using a Grimoire of the Zoologically Dubious, Gross-Ass Idol, Weird Dead Things in Jars, Magic Cue Ball, or an Animetronic Puppet, you’ll get a weapon just shy of ultimate weapon levels of power affordable as early as Medium entry. Your little hero will be wiping the damn floor with everything they run into, though they will get the Shipping Matrix debuff “Kinda Creepy” if they don’t have it already. You will be congratulating yourself for breaking the game, Until.

Yeah, Until rates the capital letter. If you’ve got a hero of Heart, Doom, or Mind, they’ll be able to see it coming, and drop a few hints re: ‘you should stop using those, kinda creeping us out here” with increasing frequency as the critical point approaches. The game keeps a kill-tally for the number of enemies killed by grimdark weapons. Once you’ve gotten an appropriate number (apparently dependent on the number of players in the session) of kills, any Catastrophic Shipping Breakdown or exposure to a second major Grimdark source will trigger Full Grimdark, exchanging the character’s Aspect for Outer Darkness and turning them into an NPC. Their Shipping Matrix becomes incapable of being modified positively, which means unless you win the game in a damn hurry you’re going to have to kill them off before the whole party suffers Death By Fratricide. And, uh, protip: you’re not going to like the ending you get if you beat the final boss with a Grimdark character.

There’s a grand total of one way to cure Grimdark, and it’s killing the affected character. On the upside, if they haven’t used their free resurrection yet, they’re just one life down. On the downside, killing a Grimdarkened character is not something that is easily done; any class of Outer Darkness is on par with most flavors of the final boss.  On the further down side, if a character’s gone God Tier their death is automatically counted as just. On the side of down that dwells in the lightless depths from which no hope can ever emerge, a god-tiered Grimdark character is (depending on Class) a more difficult enemy to face than the Nightmare Mode final boss. There’s a special movelist for Gods of Outer Darkness, and they will always open the fight with Fall of Fluthlu. Fall of Fluthlu randomly selects a number between one and six- that number of your party will immediately die. If there’s a Light-aspect in your party, the number selected will always be one. It will be the Light-aspect. Each round following the first, there’s a ten percent chance they’ll use it again.

So. If it alchemizes to create a weapon that writhes with unspeakable energies from beyond the Furthest Ring?

Don’t fucking alchemize it.


End file.
